how about a flyscreen?

I should have a little shield between the headlight and the tachometer's body for a little bug protection at speed. Plus I need something that some of this ugly wire can hide behind. How about this shape?

The console is asymetrical by design; I'm not affraid to proliferate this to the bodywork. Kind of like it's giving you a sideways glance or a little knowing smirk?




P.S. fiberglass is not my only fabrication medium, but if it gets any more complex than this speedo sensor hanger, I would rather do it in something involving chemicals

wiring tach part three

OK, well I powered up the tacho using the black ignition switch lead as advised by pop earlier. Worked fine. Then came splicing the sensor wire into the coil. I tried using the green/ground line first but no signal. Perhaps there was a signal but not the kind the tach needed? There are was a voltage setting that I had to use when calibrating the tach and in the manual it says to set it to the "hi" setting when going off the coil, so my guess is that they are expecting the pulse to come from wire to the CDI...and that was what it required! Thanks guys for sending some comments to help this thing along!

I love how the needle changes color:

wiring tach part two

OK, now for the head scratching. I could use some help here! This bike does not come with any facilities for tach output management, so I'm parsing their instructions on how to patch the sensor into my engine coil directly:

If you wish to connect the ignition coil, the SPA tacho is fully protected. It will connect to any coil including magneto's and is not damaged by reverse polarity. Connect black to chassis, and red to the ignition pulse side of the coil. Do not make any kind of connection to the HT leads or the spark plugs, this voltage is highly destructive

So my guess is to splice both the skinny black, and green tach lead with the "eye" terminal directly to the frame ground in the picture below. And my gut says the red should splice into the CDI line right there.



The coil installation schematic is in the lower right of this page from the manual. When I first read this, it sounded like I should patch the red tach lead into the green/ground lead of the coil because it has a (-) insignia at the terminal on the coil...but that just doesn't make any sense to me!



The bike's wiring diagram is fairly simple as far as these things go.

Below is a table of the various connections to the meter's body. The 10 element array is the one I'm concerned with.

Aside from the +/- leads coming from the tach sensor at the coil which we went over at the beginning, there are 3 other leads attaching here that I need to safely incorporate into the bike's harness somehow:

• Ground was easy: I just spliced it into the same ground line used for my front turn signals.
  
• Red "+12 Volts Battery" lead. It has an inline fuse. I had originally spliced it into the red battery line by the ignition switch, but that made no sense because the tach's LCD lit up as soon as I connected it. Perhaps I'm supposed to use something called a "relay" to mitigate this, but I see no mention of doing so with the tach installation instructions.
  
• There is another red lead with a label on it: "lights on" presumably having something to do with...lights.
  

Curiously, I tried connecting the "+12 Volts Battery" line to the brown line in my bike's wiring harness, thinking it the tach could use the same line that my tail light uses (which switches on with my ignition key). THAT seems to work okay in that the tach powers on only when the ignition is turned on, no idea if I'm overloading my circuit insodoing...presumably the tach doesn't draw that much power tho ???

Oh well, thanks for reading through this for me. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them. I look at the map on the upper right corner of this window tracking the visitors and wonder what you all are up to?

thumbs up! first shakedown!

Okay, just a limp across town to a friend's afternoon barbecue, but still a real enough ride to shake it through some gears and attempt a stoppie or two (that 320mm brembo works). Still, Sarah was happy for me to have reached this point and insisted on some pictures. Well it's been 2,1/2 years. Through open heart surgery, 2 moves, shlepping parts here and there. Countless hours pondering, sketching, rebuilding, pondering more...

...And now that I'm back home, I see so much more to do. 3 miles of loose wiring needing to be trimmed out of the situation, suspension is totally out of whack, I think I ran out of clearance under the fender in back and scuffed the pipe and made an unnatural sound with the back of the license plate on a bump...but still...Face in the helmet says it all.



A little back yard burnout


Spent the morning wiring all the signal lighting gear in place. Man, I went through so many failed crimp connectors. Good thing I bought 3x more than I needed. It was good practice, I'll be revisiting this all at some point for the tacho. Dad turned me onto this coiled plastic stuff that really bundles up your loom nice and you can see it below. Since I had the harness all apart trying to figure out the turn signal logic, I took some time to clean off all that gooey tape that had been resident with the spiders since before polyps were even a twinkle in Ronald Reagan's colon.


Also took some time to affix some adhesive insulation under the tank just for a little more peace of mind

side panels fitted

OK, well while I was waiting for some electrical stuff to show up in the mail, continued work on the side panels. They were kind of a fuss but I like 'em well enough now that they're in place.

Here I'm making the splash molds from those plugs I did earlier


Then I did a quick layup of the parts that you see demolded here, you can see the boogers along the edges. I'm not too particular about this...sidepanels get scuffed up pretty well no matter what. I think I need to put a sticker or two on them. Probably a SIDEBURN logo :)



To mount them up, I made hollow "pegs" from a tubular layup around some foam. When the tube dried, I chopped the sections up and then glued to another fiberglass layup, placing some washers so that there would be something for the mounting bolts to interface with. On the touching side, I'll apply some bicycle inner tube rubber so that there's some vibration dampening


Here, I'm gluing up the pegs to the back of the panels


After the tacking glue set, I removed the panels and applied a bit more reinforcement. The black tips are a few layers of bicycle inner tube that were glued together and then onto the pegs using barge contact cement. It all cleans up well with a bit of hot Dremel action:


Here's how they are mounted up to the bike. I got some adhesive insulating stuff from Pegasus Auto Racing that I'll apply to the right side eventually.


P.S.I used an angle grinder to clean up neoprene of the saddle foam; it looks a bit smoother now on the edges. Peter lent me the angle grinder. It's a great tool, he has six of them because his father in law is insane and keeps giving him spares. I think I'll do well if I have one for each hand, Pete!

rent 'dust to glory'

awesome documentary of baja 1000...I think this might have been one of the last years before Honda moved to the oversquare 450 mill. I see a lot of early 2000 XR650R's around here that are plated and man, I wish I had one before California made it impossible to license dirtbikes for road:

on chain slack

Joel and I had a good exchange on chain slack earlier and I felt it needs a bonafide post with some hopefully clearer pictures to see how things look.

For review, here's what the system looks like with the stock dogbone connecting link (nevermind the blue tiedown, it's not compressing anything yet):


When I measure the chain slack, it's at about 1,1/4", the tight side of the manual's spec of 1,1/4 to 1,5/8".

Here's what I look like with my 1" lowering link (the gold member -- hehe):


Here's what it looks like with the pivot in line with the axes


And here is how much play is left over when everything is in line under light pressure with my finger:


Everyone says it's better to be a little loose than too tight and I agree. My question is whether this is too tight still.

And here's the unnerving part. If I had another link in the chain I would have some elbow room but this is awfully close. Tires do weird things sometimes, and this is less than 1/8"